Connector Maintenance

[FJ_Hooligan]

I guess I'm getting lazy in my old age.  Or senile.

With the Central Rally in a few weeks, I decided to stir up the oil in the FJ and scrub in the new front tire.  I rode it a few weeks and the carb cleaning I performed a few months ago still has the FJ purring fine.

So today I fire it up and it's running on 2 cylinders with the tach reading zero revs.  I cut it off and give it another try but results are same.  My first thought is the flipping Dyna ignition has failed again.  Larry Nelson's name immediately pops into my head, he's the service guy at Dyna and I'm kind of disappointed that I can remember it so easily. 

Anyway, thanks to Dyna's "You bought one of our ignitions, it failed, so we'll sell you another one at our outrageous cost" policy, I have a spare ignition module.  I swap it in and all 4 cylinders come to life.  Great....  I take the FJ down the road and it seems fine until I notice the tach do a slight jump.  I continue to cruise around and I see it jump a few more times.  Okay, this may or may not be ignition related.

I don't recall the last time I checked the ignition switch and coil connectors under the tank, so off comes the tank.  Each of those connectors rains out blue flakey copper corrosion debris.  After contact cleaner, scraping the blades with a knife then coating with dielectric grease, tach is solid as a rock.

There was one other moment.  On the initial ride around the block after cleaning the connectors, the motor seemed to have a slight hesitation.  I thought it was just a little cold.  But it continued to get worse.  Crap, I'm running out of fuel!  The vacuum line to the petcock came off easy during disassembly so I clamped it with a tie wrap on installation (not having a suitable metal clamp).  Limped back home and pulled the tank.  Vacuum line was fine but my Colder fitting had popped loose.  NOW everything is fine.

Check those connectors guys! 

[Pat Conlon]

So it wasn't the Dyna?

As I was reading your post, at the third paragraph, I said to myself...."Shit, is that Dyna #3 or #4?

[FJ_Hooligan]

No, Pat, it wasn't the Dyna. 

I forgot to say that I reinstalled the original unit and it worked fine.  That was the other indication that it wasn't the ignition.

That would have been #3.